Formerly Goose Island Brewpub Shoreditch.
Former brewpub
221 Shoreditch High Street E1 6PJ (Hackney)
queensheadshoreditch.com
First sold beer: 21 November 2018
Ceased brewing: September 2022, brewhouse removed by November 2023
Chicago brewery Goose Island, founded in 1988 and part of AB InBev since 2011, established its first London home, the Vintage Ale House, in Balham in 2016. It closed this less than two years later to focus on its first brewpub in Europe, opened in November 2018 in a former restaurant and cocktail bar on busy Shoreditch High Street.
The brewhouse behind glass at the back was a high-spec German-style 5 hl installation supplied by ProBrew in Wisconsin. It even had a water filtration system and a grist mill, rare in a London brewery this size.
Following the trend for multinationals to reduce their involvement in UK craft-style brewing, AB InBev sold the site to pub chain Urban Pubs and Bars in September 2022. It’s since been renamed the Queen’s Head. Brewing was suspended and the brewers made redundant.
The kit remained in place for a while with the possibility of leasing it to a third party or parties as the cost of removal was high. But the brewhouse and most of the other equipment had been removed by November 2023.
In Goose Island days, beers were only sold in the pub in tank, keg and with one barrel-aged line dispensed direct from the wooden barrels using a Rack Aeriale nitrogen-based system developed by Dogfish Head brewery in Delaware, the only one in the UK.
Updated 23 Feburary 2024.
Leave a Reply